How long can end users continue to grow and manage their data storage infrastructures, and how will VARs and systems integrators respond when end users can't handle those infrastructures any more?
These are key questions that you, as a VAR or systems integrator, must ask yourself. Appetites for data storage will continue to grow but end users may fail to consider the consequences of their buying habits.
Storage magazine recently released the results of its August 2006 Storage Purchasing Intentions Survey, administered twice each year. Now in its fourth year, this survey received a total of 564 responses from storage managers representing a broad cross-section of industry sectors. Here SearchStorageChannel.com has devised its own "spending guide" to help IT channel professionals interpret and act upon the results.
Specifically, this guide will help you understand where your customers' storage dollars are going, where they're not going, and where you can step in to facilitate the storage planning, spending and deployment process.
The following table of contents will help you navigate to individual storage spending trends and, finally, IT channel best practices to help you tap into those trends in 2007.
Storage Buying Guide
Part 1: What are your customers buying?
Part 2: Increased SATA hard drive adoption
Part 3: Hard drive replacement
Part 4: Production iSCSI SAN interest rises
Part 5: Less storage management spending
Part 6: Respond to customers' storage buying habits
About the author: Jerome Wendt is an independent writer and analyst specializing in the field of open systems storage and storage area networks. He has managed storage for small and large organizations in this capacity.
